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By Abdi Sheikh

MOGADISHU, July 11 (Reuters) - Gunmen shot dead a senior local aid worker in Somalia on Friday, the latest humanitarian worker to be killed in the anarchic Horn of Africa country.

Witnesses said men armed with pistols assassinated Mohamed Kheire, the administration officer for German charity Bread for the World, at Elasha south of the capital Mogadishu.

"They shot him in the head with several bullets and he died on the spot," local man Ahmed Farah told Reuters by telephone.

"The men then disappeared."

It was just the latest murder of a senior aid worker in Somalia. On Sunday, gunmen in Mogadishu killed Osman Ali Ahmed, local country director of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).

The local head of Kheire's organisation, Abukar Sheikh Ali, said the charity had suspended all its operations in the area.

"Kheire was the backbone of our group, and as a result of his death we shall not be able to help the internally displaced people with water, food and sanitation."

Suspicion for assassinations and kidnappings usually falls on clan militia and Islamist-led insurgents who are fighting the interim government and its Ethiopian military allies.

In separate violence, government soldiers patrolling northern Mogadishu killed five people on Friday, residents said.

"We were confined to our houses as the soldiers picked up suspects," said one local, Musa Osman.

"We saw five dead men lying in the area later."

Gunmen have killed three local aid workers and are still holding four foreign humanitarian workers -- two Italians, a Kenyan and a Briton -- and three Somalis hostage.

The killings have raised fears among aid workers who say worsening insecurity has stopped them reaching many victims in a humanitarian crisis that may be the worst in Africa.

Fighting has killed more than 8,600 civilians since early last year, local rights activists say, and a million people out of population of nine million have been forced from their homes.

Somalia has had no central rule and has been in a state of near-perpetual conflict since the 1991 toppling of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. (Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Jon Boyle) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/)

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